L.M. Montgomery and Popular Culture the Fourth Biennial International Symposium, Hosted by the L.M

Founded in 1991 by Carolyn Strom Collins and Christina Wyss Eriksson L.M. Montgomery and Popular Culture The Fourth Biennial International Symposium, hosted by the L.M. Montgomery Institute, was held at the University of Prince Edward Island June 29 - July 2 2000. Among the LMM Literary Society members attending were Carolyn Collins, Mary Beth Cavert and Ann Johnson. The conference speakers and participants explored the many interpretations and mutations of Montgomery's works -- from television, video, film and theater to a culture of collection, tourism, fan networks and artifacts. As always, the L.M. Montgomery conference brings together a wonderful mix of thought provoking, amusing and enlightening scholars, experts and dedicated life-long learners of LMM. Part of the magic of a Montgomery Symposium is fueled by its location on Prince Edward Island. Dr. Elizabeth Epperly commented that "Montgomery taught us how to see this place. She was a 'person of place.' The PEI we see is what we perceive through her words." This summer, the LMM Institute Kate Macdonald Butler, daughter of Stuart Macdonald, introduced its new CD-ROM: LMM's second son, was the keynote speaker. She read an imaginary letter to her grandmother -- who died almost 20 years before her birth -- in which she told The Bend in the Road: stories of her father and summarized the profound An Invitation to the World influence of "Grandmother Maud" on the world today. and Work of L.M. "Writers, academics, historians, movie moguls, television Montgomery executives, theatrical producers, publishers, archivists, librarians, artisans, manufacturers, intellectual property It is an outstanding resource for lawyers continue to ensure that the name L.M. scholars as well as all of those Montgomery will likely never be forgotten." interested in LMM. A brief excursion through part of the 14+ Nearly 40 presentations were scheduled in less than hour long "e-encyclopedia" whetted three days. Some topics were: Mass Marketing, Popular our appetite for more; it is a Culture, and the Literary Cult; Our Beloved Lucy Maud: beautiful and thorough exploration Mythologizing the Creator for the Sake of the Creation; of the author's life and works. How the Story Girl Lost Her Stories: A Discussion of Interested LMMers can order it Television Adaptations; L.M. Montgomery and British from the LMM Institute at UPEI, Children's Literature. [email protected] 902-628-4346. Dr. Elizabeth Epperly presented "The Visual Imagination of L.M. Montgomery" and demonstrated LMM's use of photography as a "memory picture." She noted that LMM had an eye for capturing curves like bends in roads, bridges, and fences. Many photos have “a distant keyhole of light like those of Lover’s Lane. There were two sessions which were of interest to book collectors. Paul Tiessen and Hildi Froese Teissen presented "Educating Ephraim: L.M. Montgomery and Anxiety About Popular Culture." They are the editors of a new book, L.M. Montgomery's Ephraim Weber: Letters 1916- 1941 ($45, MLR Editions Canada c/o Paul Tiessen, Dept. of English, Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, ON N2L 3C5 Canada. email [email protected]). Weber and Montgomery corresponded for 40 years. This collection "teems with her ideas on many topics, from war to technology, from sex in modern literature to the future of Canada, from domestic chores to the problems of contemporary youth." The conference ended with a presentation by Ron Cohen, "Collecting the Popular." He has donated over 300 books, early editions, by L.M. Montgomery to the National Library of Canada. The Ronald I. Cohen Lucy Maud Montgomery Collection, housed in the National Library's Rare Book collection, has approximately 35 editions of Anne of Green and many other volumes in dust jackets. His collection also includes non-North American from Great Britain, Australia, Japan, Norway and Korea. Mr. Cohen described how his collection was started: "It was built on variants . Because of the absence of a descriptive bibliography of the works of Lucy Maud Montgomery, any LMM collector is faced with a jigsaw puzzle in which only the edge pieces, namely, the titles of the books, are clear. No complete picture of the inside of the puzzle exists. To compensate for the missing background information, I tried to assemble as many different copies as I could in the hope that they would some day offer clues to bibliographers, scholars, collectors, those who treasure these works not only as stories but also as artifacts. Differences in the presentation of the title page, the binder's cloth, the name of the printer, the type face in which the printer's notice is set, the copyright date and so on led to the painstaking gathering of pieces of the puzzle. To an enthusiastic collector, the delight is in the hunt. I had not previously thought of any long-term goal for the collection. When I realized that the collection could also have a value to the National Library, its raison d'être was fixed. The hunt became more intense and more rewarding. For example, I found no fewer than five serious contenders for the title of first Canadian edition of Anne's House of Dreams. The collection includes not one, but three copies of the rare 1916 book of poetry, The Watchman, two of them in dust jackets (different jackets, of course)…" LMM STORIES RE-DISCOVERED Thanks to the world-wide web and eBay, two heretofore "lost" LMM short- stories have been discovered and can be added to hundreds of others LMM wrote, published, and pasted into her own scrapbooks years ago. The late Rea Wilmshurst re-discovered, catalogued, and published collections of many of those stories in recent years under such titles as "Akin to Anne" and "Along the Shore." The titles of the recently-found stories -- "The Mirror" (#1122 in the 1986 Russell/Wilmshurst Bibliography) and "The Punishment of Billy" (#1141) -- were among over sixty "unverified" titles listed in LMM's ledger without publication information; no copies of these stories were pasted into her scrapbooks. Thanks to a New Brunswick collector of vintage magazines who auctions them on the Internet, the two stories and their publication history were brought to light. For those who want to update their Bibliographies, "The Mirror" was published in the February 1931 issue of Canadian Home Journal; "The Punishment of Billy" was published in the February 1929 issue of Ladies Home Journal. All material in the Shining Scroll is the property of the authors and editors. Text and photos may not be reproduced without 2 consent. These copies were made available to Montgomery scholars in 2007 by Mary Beth Cavert, editor Shining Scroll, newsletter of the L.M. Montgomery Literary Society, Minneapolis/St. Paul Minnesota. Carolyn noticed that copies of the magazines with the stories in them were up for auction, but did not win the bidding frenzy. But she contacted the seller and asked if he would be willing to photocopy the stories before the magazines themselves were shipped to the winning bidders. Requesting anonymity, the seller graciously agreed and sent the copies right away. About the same time, Joanne Wood of the Kindred Spirits Society of Hamilton (Ont.) group found another story's history and sent it to Carolyn. "Brother Beware" is in a group of about forty stories that exist in collections or in the scrapbooks but are without bibliographic information (#s 1048-1087). Joanne determined that it originally appeared in Country Home Magazine, June 1936. LMM later edited it for inclusion in a collection she entitled, "The Blythes are Quoted" (published posthumously as The Road to Yesterday in 1974). In August 2000, Carolyn donated copies of these three stories and their bibliographic information to the LMM Institute at UPEI for incorporation into the photocopied collection of LMM's scrapbooks available for study in the UPEI Robertson Library. (The Confederation Centre Archives in Charlottetown keeps the original scrapbooks.) Carolyn will give a presentation to the LMMLS on the stories at the December. Carolyn also added a scrapbook containing a serialization of Anne of Green Gables to her LMM collection. In November 24, 1909, the Family Herald and Weekly Star announced that it would serialize L.M. Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables word for word: "Anne of Green Gables" is the story of one of the sweetest and most lovable children in the realm of fiction. The quaint little morsel of humanity to whom we are introduced in the opening chapters soon gains a hold on our affections, and the better we get to know her the more lovable she becomes. So life-like is the pen-picture of little Anne, so vivid is the recital of all her doings and sayings, that we seem to get on intimate terms with her, and to regard her as one of our personal friends. We are deeply interested in her dreams and ambitions, and her exploits and escapades entertain and amuse us, but the dominant feeling for dear little Anne is love tinged with a shade of pity. Mark Twain, who ought to be a fairly good judge of fiction, said, after reading the story: "In 'Anne of Green Gables' you will find the dearest and most moving and delightful child since the immortal Alice. Bliss Carmen, the celebrated poet, is equally eulogistic. "Henceforth," he says, "Anne must always remain one of the immortal children of fiction, those characters who are as real as our flesh and blood friends, whom we cherish in the quiet places of our hearts reserved for the dearest mortals we know." The serial began on December 8, 1909. Anne of Avonlea followed in 1910. All material in the Shining Scroll is the property of the authors and editors.

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